Bad Faith Smack Down: The Case for Arguing in Good Faith
Recently the government of the United States has issued a memo that will no doubt ramp up medical intervention into intersex bodies, and deny rights to trans people. Even more recently, Dr. Hendrik van der Breggen has posted another opinion piece that attempts to show the immorality of LGBT2S people openly expressing their desires through a philosophical and theological argument with Lady Gaga’s famous axiom that queer people are “born that way,” and therefore perfect creations of God. In response to both of these events, Dr. Matt Sheedy and I have decided to publish a blog post we wrote this summer that we have been sitting on (we had grand plans of starting up our own blog, but being #earlycareeracademics got in the way). We could hold on to it no longer:
Our world is complicated, and as we move further into the muck of what can feel like chaos, we need clear and clever thinking, and open and honest discussions about the events, identities, and debates that make us feel confused, icky, or (perhaps especially) angry. This summer, a piece called “A Perfect Storm,” was published on mysteinbach.ca (which has been published in other locations before) by Dr. Hendrik van der Breggen, and by goly it got our shackles up, but we are determined to engage in the kind of discussion we think is so necessary. Deep breath, here goes:
Van der Breggen presents us with three theses that he claims present a “perfect storm” of philosophical thinking that “threatens to undo us.” The centre of the storm, according to Dr. van der Breggen, is that we now live in a world (at least in the US and Canada), where people can declare their identity in any way they feel, be it a different gender, race, or age. Dr. van der Breggen cites an interview on Fox News between host Tucker Carlson and Cathy Areu of Catalina Magazine, whose response to every question that she’s asked about these identity issues is to claim that it’s perfectly American to choose who you want to be. It is “okay.” Period. For Dr. van der Breggen, this is not only a violation of objective truth, but is insanity, plain and simple.
We suggest that Dr. van der Breggen’s argument is not only unnecessarily alarmist but also riddled with philosophical fallacies and erroneous statements. What follows are three theses that clearly outline these problems.
Thesis one:
Identity politics is not the issue that will or must define our current cultural moment.
Recently, popular thinkers like Dr. Jordan Peterson, professor of psychology at the University of Toronto, have been publically hand-wringing about transgender people and their claims to rights (including to have their preferred pronouns adhered to, to change their gender on their passports, and to have access to gender-neutral bathrooms). In response, Dr. Peterson argues that such identity-based discussions are the most pressing issue of our day. Dr. van der Breggen echoes such claims, suggesting that transgender people’s apparent misunderstanding about their identity is the issue that will “undo us.” Really? As a recent study shows that climate change is literally about to alter our world in irreversible ways, we are stressed about other people’s gender identities? We are not suggesting, of course, that we should not seriously attend to the questions that gender identity raises, nor do we think that in order to take seriously climate change we have to ignore these important conversations, but we are absolutely suggesting that in the face of all of the chaos in this world, choosing trans people (or even identity politics writ large) as the crux of our undoing seems pretty silly. Actually, it is extraordinarily silly.
Thesis two:
We have ceased to argue in good faith.
In our current political moment, we too often see people debating in bad faith on all sides of any disagreement. Dr. van der Breggen presents in his argument a straw person. As a philosophy PhD, we are certain that Dr. van der Breggen is well aware of what we mean, but for those who don’t: to construct a straw person argument is to represent an opponent’s position in a disingenuous way so that one can more easily tear it down. In picking on trans people, Dr. van der Breggen chose an example that is an outlier to most discussions of trans. He chose an example of a person who is both transgender and trans-racial. This means that the person feels themself to be part of a gender that is not the one they were designated at birth, and not of a racial group that they were not designated at birth or is not the one that they have lived with up until their moment of transition. We are not here to pass judgement about whether not not these claims are legitimate (whatever that would mean), but to assert in the strongest possible terms that the conflation of transgender and trans-racial as though they are somehow the same constructs a straw person about both of these positions. It is arguing in bad faith. It is trying to make very complex issues (gender and race and ethnicity) simplistic in order to make a mockery of them.
Here are a few further examples of what we mean: In the video clip from Fox News that Dr. van der Breggen provides as evidence for the ridiculousness of transgender identity, Carlson (the interviewer) argues that changing gender is something one might do to gain access to certain privileges. In fact, transgender people are murdered at a disproportionate rate to the rest of society and, as van der Breggen points out elsewhere, are more likely to commit suicide. Choosing to transition puts one at significant risk for personal injury, never mind social exclusion. To suggest that a person would choose to transition as a way of accessing a more privileged life has obviously never talked with a trans person. It also seems at odds with Dr. van der Breggen’s other arguments that trans people are confused or fundamentally mistaken about their own identity, for if someone was intentionally misusing the system, they would most certainly be aware of it. Moreover, we challenge Dr. van der Breggen to find a statistically significant number of trans people (already a small section of our population) who exploit or make up trans identities in order to access any privileges. We are certain such a group is not large enough to count as statistically significant, never mind represent any threat to society. Needless to say, the number of people who claim a trans-racial identity is much, much smaller, and they are typically called out with condemnation as with the high profile case of Rachel Dolezal. Whether such condemnation is fair or helpful for understanding these issues is a different question, though one thing is clear: the vast majority of people who support and want to think in a meaningful way about transgender issues do not think that any way of identifying oneself is simply “ok,” no questions asked.
Also in the clip, and in Dr. van der Breggen’s piece, gender and sex are persistently conflated, which makes overly simplistic the way that human beings embody both sex and gender. Gender and sex are not the same, though they are co-implicated in ways we still do not quite understand. Sex is biology. Gender is the way we present ourselves in the world as masculine, feminine, or somewhere inbetween. Sexual biology, like gender, exists on a spectrum of possibilities in humans not just for people designated intersex, but for all of us: tell us, how do you confirm your sex? Genitals? Chromosomes? Gonads? Hormones? Did you know that all of these designations are unstable? See Anne Fausto-Sterling or Myra Hird’s work, for example. Gender is also a series of possibilities, including how we chose to dress, what toys we play with as children, how we move our bodies.
To suggest that gender comes exclusively from our biology is to misunderstand that gender has always been changing. Think about it: does masculinity look the same now as in 1750? Of course not. It used to be that to be a woman meant always wearing skirts. Whether we believe now that women should wear skirts or not, we agree that not wearing skirts does not make a person a man. A quick glance at cultural patterns over time in different parts of the world reveals a wide variation of what is considered to be ‘masculine’ and ‘feminine,’ even in our own culture where styles of hair style, dress, and recreational activities have undergone radical changes over time. It was not too long ago that women were discouraged from so-called masculine activities — be it sport, exercise, military service, and many jobs such as medicine and engineering. Most people today consider these views antiquated as we’ve proven them to be false (of course women can do these things), though it’s worth keeping in mind that it was only a few decades ago that many argued that women being able to vote, drive a car, or have a personal bank account was ‘insane.’ We don’t mean to suggest that these differences in gender norms are the same issue as transgender identities (there are many important differences), but we do want to say, in no uncertain terms, that to dismiss something because it’s not what we’re used to or comfortable with is not an argument. It is fear-mongering in place of an argument and functions to draw a line in the sand, through caricature and demonization, rather than through a careful consideration of a very difficult topic.
As for the comment by Robert Gagnon that Dr. van der Breggen cites — that people might identify “as a 5-year old so as to excel in kindergarten,” (or as Napoleon), which suggests that “biology has no bearing on reality” engages in a straw person, a slippery slope argument (that one outcome will necessarily lead to increasingly absurd outcomes, without basing such a slide in evidence), and outright hyperbole (of course this example is absurd, and an extreme outlier even if it does exist). We’ve heard similar arguments for many years that ‘gay marriage’ will lead to beastiality. Has this proven to be true? Of course not. It was a method of providing a harmful example in order to incite fear of a population people did not understand. The ridiculous examples provided by van der Breggen undermine his argument because they are similarity fallacious. These examples are provided in bad faith.
When we argue in bad faith, that is when we choose the most inflammatory example of any one phenomena and present it as indicative of the whole, which is what Dr. van der Breggen does here, we do an injustice to each other. This injustice does not, as thesis three of Dr. van der Breggen document would have it, indicate hate, but a lack of respect for the other. We need to care for each other, even if the other confuses us or makes our lifestyle feel threatened. Dr. van der Breggen argues elsewhere that trans people need to be treated with respect even if some folks disagree that they are, indeed, the gender they are. By arguing in bad faith, the respect Dr. van der Breggen tells us we all need to have for trans people is undermined.
Thesis Three:
We need to listen to each other.
There is no doubt that our world is changing rapidly. This change has been expedited by access to the Internet. In response, people are negotiating all kinds of new possibilities. People who, in the past, have not had access to a forum to share their experiences are starting to have one (think about how many narratives of Indigenous people, or racial or sexual minorities were published by mainstream publishers prior to the 1970s, for example. The Internet has exploded these possibilities to have minority experiences read by a large public). Like Bambi on new and uncertain legs, we are all negotiating this interconnected new world full of new ways of explaining our experiences, desires, and identities. We may not agree with how someone expresses their identity, or even how they explain it. But, we need to approach each other as equals, as worthy of being listened to in good faith. If we don’t understand something, it behooves us even more to listen to the people around us that might be able to help us get to a more informed place. We need to stop looking for inflammatory YouTube videos that will confirm our biases, but instead go out into our communities and meet real people that embody the identities we think are putting us at risk. Ask questions with an honest ear to listening.
Dr. Katelyn Dykstra holds a PhD in English, Theatre, Film, & Media from The University of Manitoba. She teaches in their Women’s and Gender Studies program. She publishes on intersex representation in Contemporary literature and film.
Dr. Matt Sheedy holds a PhD in Religious Studies from The University of Manitoba. He teaches at the University of Bonn in Germany. He has published widely on the representation of various religions in the public sphere.
